Path Complexity in Virtual Water Maze Navigation: Differential Associations with Age, Sex, and Regional Brain Volume
| Autor: | Ana M. Daugherty, Andrew R. Bender, Naftali Raz, Yiqin Yang, Cheryl L. Dahle, Peng Yuan |
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| Rok vydání: | 2014 |
| Předmět: |
Adult
Male Aging Time Factors Adolescent Cognitive Neuroscience Morris water navigation task Neuropsychological Tests Fractal dimension Spatial memory Developmental psychology User-Computer Interface Young Adult Cellular and Molecular Neuroscience Sex Factors Fractal Orientation Image Processing Computer-Assisted medicine Humans Longitudinal Studies Maze Learning Aged Cognitive map business.industry Brain Pattern recognition Articles Middle Aged Magnetic Resonance Imaging medicine.anatomical_structure Path (graph theory) Linear Models Female Artificial intelligence business Psychology Parahippocampal gyrus Spatial Navigation Curse of dimensionality |
| Zdroj: | Cerebral Cortex. 25:3122-3131 |
| ISSN: | 1460-2199 1047-3211 |
| DOI: | 10.1093/cercor/bhu107 |
| Popis: | Studies of human navigation in virtual maze environments have consistently linked advanced age with greater distance traveled between the start and the goal and longer duration of the search. Observations of search path geometry suggest that routes taken by older adults may be unnecessarily complex and that excessive path complexity may be an indicator of cognitive difficulties experienced by older navigators. In a sample of healthy adults, we quantify search path complexity in a virtual Morris water maze with a novel method based on fractal dimensionality. In a two-level hierarchical linear model, we estimated improvement in navigation performance across trials by a decline in route length, shortening of search time, and reduction in fractal dimensionality of the path. While replicating commonly reported age and sex differences in time and distance indices, a reduction in fractal dimension of the path accounted for improvement across trials, independent of age or sex. The volumes of brain regions associated with the establishment of cognitive maps (parahippocampal gyrus and hippocampus) were related to path dimensionality, but not to the total distance and time. Thus, fractal dimensionality of a navigational path may present a useful complementary method of quantifying performance in navigation. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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